


borrow the moonlight

by could-have-beens (uncorrectgrammar)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Post-Break Up, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:00:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23685781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uncorrectgrammar/pseuds/could-have-beens
Summary: Ginny tiptoes down the stairs to find Harry leaning against the kitchen counter, hands shoved into his pyjama pockets and staring at the ground. He looks up when he hears her, eyes gaunt and mouth thin.Ginny and Harry, on a lonely night the summer after Dumbledore's funeral.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 24
Kudos: 64





	borrow the moonlight

Ginny tiptoes down the stairs to find Harry leaning against the kitchen counter, hands shoved into his pyjama pockets and staring at the ground. He looks up when he hears her, eyes gaunt and mouth thin.

There are more possibilities than there should be. This war and the one before it had slathered on the trauma and left them to fend for themselves. Even now, there are nights when Ginny wakes in a cold sweat, throat dry with her silent screams. Nights when she sneaks out of her room and flies as fast and as high as she can, until the cool night wind makes her forget about the blood and feathers on her robes, the serpent song on her tongue, words whispered like a lullaby by a handsome boy with ink-stained hands. Nights when she writes Hermione to make sure she's alive, wakes Ron in the middle of the night to hear him breathing, splays her palm over Dad's heart to make sure it hasn't stopped.

"Harry," she whispers.

"Gin," he whispers back, then hesitates, corrects himself. "Ginny."

She forces herself not to squirm, despite the swooping sensation in her stomach, like she's somehow missed a step on the stairs — the same feeling she gets when she's with him, broken up or not. "Couldn't sleep?"

"No." He looks away, but not quickly enough to hide how his bottom lip trembles, how his eyes fill with tears.

Without even thinking about it, Ginny lunges for him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and hugging him close. Harry buries his face in the crook of her neck, returning the embrace, his breath heavy and warm against her skin. She rubs his back, a soothing up and down motion, and doesn't say _it's okay_ or ask him _are you all right?_ or whatever meaningless platitudes he's no doubt sick of hearing. She knows being here means more than any _it's okay_ or polite condolences, so she lets him cry even as she feels his tears seeping into her robe, even as her arms ache with the effort to hold him up.

When he straightens up, eyes red-rimmed and mouth chapped, hands leaving her slowly like honey dripping down the side of the bottle, Harry offers a weak smile. "Sorry."

Ginny shakes her head. "Don't apologize."

"It's just — I, uh, I found some letters." Scrapping a hand over his face, he sighs and gestures to the shoe box on the kitchen table. "From my mum and dad . . . Sirius and Du —" He exhales a shaky breath and closes his eyes, eyelashes wet.

Ginny nods, understanding. She wipes at the tear that falls out of his eye and swallows around the lump in her throat. "You want some hot chocolate while we go through them?"

"You don't have to."

"I want to, Harry."

She refuses his help with the drinks, urging him to sit down while she warms the milk and mixes in the chocolate. Harry's shoulders slump, hands clasped in his lap. Ginny feels his eyes on her as she stirs, and she listens as his labored breathing slows and steadies.

"I miss them," Harry says, fingers tracing the creases of the old parchment.

Ginny places her hand over his and doesn't have to ask who. "I do, too."

They go through the letters and the occasional photograph, wondering aloud about Lily and James' childhood, swapping stories about Sirius and the summer months spent in Grimmauld Place, and reminiscing about Dumbledore and his strange speeches and his twinkling eyes. The stories and memories make Ginny feel warm, safe, _normal_ as the hot chocolate she made cools, forgotten.

"Thank you," Harry murmurs, tenderly touching the last photograph before returning it to the shoe box.

"Any time," she says. "We _are_ still friends, aren't we?"

Harry snorts softly and shakes his head, as if to say something else, but he doesn't. He has a sad smile in his eyes, and Ginny _knows_ — she can hear the unspoken words, can feel it in the heavy weight of the quiet between them. She can't bring herself to say it either. One day, maybe, when they've reached the distant after.

A tendril of hair falls across his forehead, out of place, so Ginny leans forward to brush it back, leans forward to press her mouth against his skin, lingering just above his eyebrow.

The clock on the wall behind him tells her that it's close to three. The kitchen light makes the space soft and cozy and slightly unreal, separating the two of them from the world. She folds the stolen moment out of time, and hoards it with memories of his hand in hers on lazy afternoons, Quidditch games on sunlit days, and the look in his eyes when he kissed her, bright like borrowed moonlight.


End file.
